Top of the Food Chain
by clara fox
Summary: Expansions of the long VeronicaWeevil scenes from 2x19, “Nevermind the Buttocks,” the first from Weevil’s perspective, the second from Veronica's. Sequal of sorts to The Nod, and Love of Roller Coasters.
1. Top of the Food Chain

**Title:** Top of the Food Chain  
**Author:** Clara Fox  
**Summary: **Weevil only has enough blood to keep up one of two things, and right now that thing needs to be his end of the conversation.  
**Setting:** Expansion of the first long Veronica/Weevil scene from 2x19, "Nevermind the Buttocks," this time from Weevil's perspective. Sequal to "Love of Roller Coasters" and "The Nod."  
**Rating: **M for language.  
**Disclaimer:** The italicized dialogue is transcribed directly from the show and belongs to Rob Thomas and the writers. The rest is my own extrapolation.

* * *

Veronica Mars is never hotter than when she's accusing him of something. Weevil wonders if she knows that her confrontations of him are more of a reward for bad behavior than a deterrent. She always approaches him with that little half smile that has more than once threatened to do some serious damage to Weevil's bravado, and sometimes he thinks that the intensity of her eye contact might bring him to his knees if he were any less of a badass. 

But Weevil definitely is a badass, and getting more so by the day. When a tiny blonde thing like Veronica Mars is posed to make him vulnerable, he knows that the best way to meet her is usually head-on. And right now she's posed, in every sense of the word.

_Wow. You know, you look exactly like this calendar in my uncle's garage._

Well, the girl in the calendar is slightly less clothed than Veronica is at the moment, but Weevil's mind can make that correction with exceedingly little effort.

Dangerously little effort, actually – Weevil only has enough blood to keep up one of two things, and right now that thing needs to be his end of the conversation. Where some guys turn to baseball, Weevil thinks of his ride.

_Now hop your ass off before you scratch my paint._

That was as crude as could be expected of Weevil, but instead of bringing his thoughts back to the relatively safe topic of auto shop, it rockets them straight to images of pinning Veronica up against the driver's side door, one hand cushioning the back of her head, the other firmly on her hip, capturing that half smile with his lips and breaking that accusatory stare as both of them shut their eyes to the rest of the world.

Weevil needs to force his mind back to something else, right now. Like bandsaws or wrenches. Or juvie, or community service.

_You seen Thumper lately, Weevil?_

Or that. There's always that.

_It's just, nobody's heard from him in weeks. If he doesn't show up soon, he's going to miss prom._

Weevil has his mind back in control, enough to know that if he ever wants to turn his little fantasies into reality, to move beyond these blazing interactions that leave him aching and leave her smugly satisfied (he assumes), he has to break Veronica Mars of her last remaining trace of naivety. She's still able to convince herself that deep down, he's just a good guy who's been misunderstood. Weevil can be gentle when he wants to be, Weevil can – if he so chooses – love you long time, but he's not nice.

_Yeah, well… I'm sure he's crushed._

He certainly _is _sure about that much. Weevil can't keep himself from grinning a little at his own cleverness. If only he put this much subtlety into his schoolwork, he can imagine her thinking. Though there's no reasonable way she could know what happened to Thumper, unless she also followed Liam to the stadium that night. Which, come to think of it, is a possibility he can't actually rule out.

_So I found this in Clemmons' office. According to the note, it was confiscated from your locker the first week of school. A particular reason you needed the Anarchist's Cookbook?_

Weevil has seen Veronica in action plenty of times; he has frequently found himself at the business end of her deductive skills. So he isn't that surprised that she discovered the Cookbook, though he's vaguely impressed at her success at getting into Clemmons' office when he has failed so often to do the same. If his dark side disturbs her, she should really take a closer look in the mirror some time.

_Yeah. I tried making the "Survivalist Stew." Didn't much care for it._

It must be an interrogation tactic – she's using this information to throw him off his guard, make him admit something about Thumper. Because if it isn't that, she can only be accusing him of something that he won't believe she could accuse him of.

_Yeah, on top of the stew, it's also a manual for making bombs in your basement._

Yes, Weevil had wanted her to let go of the idea that he is the kind of biker who sits back and lets the law coddle lowlifes who murder his friends. Yes, he had wanted her to realize that sometimes, beating someone up is as necessary as it is invigorating. But he had never thought, hadn't even begun to start thinking, that she might believe he could blow up a bus full of innocent people. Even Weevil has lines he doesn't cross.

_Wait a minute. _

He had meant to play it cool, but goes too far to the other side of the sick disbelief he feels, and it starts to come out sounding saucy, or somehow amused. He switches, very quickly and frighteningly easily, to anger.

_Just so we understand each other, are you accusing me of blowing up the bus?_

Though, they definitely must not understand each other. That couldn't be clearer to Weevil right now.

_I'm exploring a theory._

There's nothing hot about her glare right now. She actually believes that he did it, and now he wants to push her up against the car for a completely different reason.

_You didn't just happen to be at that gas station out on the PCH. You were following us, Weevil. The explosion didn't kill those people – the drop into the ocean did. Who else could have timed it like that? You could have hit 'send' on your cellphone, blown up the bus without me even knowing it._

Her face is close enough for him to smell the fruity scent of her lip gloss, but Weevil is as far as he has ever been from imagining how Veronica would taste. She doesn't just think that Weevil could blow up a bus with eight people inside it – she thinks that he could blow up a bus with nine people inside it. Veronica thinks that he could have killed her.

_Except why would I blow up a bus with one of my boys on it, huh?_

And you on it, Veronica, he doesn't say.

_You didn't mean to. You and Cervando meant to take out the limo. You, Mr. I-Sacrifice-Rats, you even put a dead one on the bus, to force the rich kids into it._

Weevil wants to point out that back at the time of the field trip, Veronica was essentially one of the rich kids herself – at least, she was fucking the richest of all of them, which should have guaranteed her a place in that limo. But she probably realizes this, maybe this is actually why she's angry – is this about Duncan? – and anyway there's no point in arguing rationally with her right now. She has a theory she wants to lay out, watch Weevil's reaction as she reveals that she knows all. She's done it before, and he's secretly loved seeing the satisfaction on her face as she confirmed that she had caught him. He doesn't know how to convince her that this time, she's entirely wrong.

_And what? We got the big, yellow bus and the long, black limo confused?_

Sarcasm is the only thing that came to him. It's not his greatest moment.

_Nope. You put the bomb in Dick's goody bag. You didn't realize he gave his bag to Bettina._

He doesn't bother asking who Bettina is, or how he was supposed to know which goody bag Dick would get, let alone make the plant without anyone seeing. She must have been determined to believe that he was guilty, to make all of this sound plausible in her head.

_You really think any of those '09ers was worth all that effort to me?_

Weevil uses fists, not explosions, to make his points, especially back when he still had a gang standing behind him. Veronica knows this – Veronica has chided him for this in the past.

_Logan was. _

Now she's bringing Echolls into this? He wonders how Veronica really feels about Logan, now. He's heard some of their repartee in the halls, and it's at least as heated as his own confrontations with her. The other ones, at least.

_He wasn't even there._

Maybe she does still want Logan, if she can go to such lengths to make the bus crash all about him. During their investigations together, Logan had tossed off enough side comments to give Weevil a fairly clear picture of how that relationship ended; it seemed that Logan hadn't reformed as much as Veronica had wanted him to, was too reckless for her. This is one reason Weevil has never let himself believe that he could have a real shot with Veronica. Even with all the heat that between them, chemistry that she can't possibly ignore and he has stopped trying to deny, Weevil will never be like Duncan. Doesn't want to be. Probably couldn't even if he tried.

_He was supposed to be. Are you telling me you wouldn't off the guy who killed Felix?_

And there it is. She has him, and he hadn't even seen it coming. He searches her face quickly, suppressing panic. Did she even believe everything she'd been accusing him of, or had she gotten him all worked up about the bus crash in order to blindside him into confirming her suspicions about Thumper? Could she have known that the single thing that could stop him in his tracks was thinking that she believed he could ever put her in harm's way?

On a good day, Veronica Mars was a bit more than Weevil could handle. But now the she knows he killed Thumper, and possibly (probably? she must have) realized that his one soft spot was her own safety, she in every way has the upper hand.

_Well, at least you got it right with Thumper. That makes you... top of the food chain again, right, Weevil?_

She sounds angry and looks angry, and it is easy to believe that angry is all she is at the moment. Or rather, it would be easy if her fingers weren't burning into his arm, pressing his tricep one by one with an insistence that isn't so much angry as it is… fiercely sensual. As overwhelming as the feeling is, Weevil still would probably chalk it up to wishful thinking, but Veronica is looking at him too steadily as she speaks, holding his gaze for too long afterward, keeping her tongue pressed lightly against the back of her teeth after saying his name, given it the tiniest of flicks before closing her mouth and finally walking away.

And so Weevil wonders as he braces himself against his car. Was that Veronica's version of an ultimatum? A thickly veiled but entirely enticing promise of the possibilities that could open to him should he reform? Weevil admires her more right now than he ever has before, but he is still a man and she still is smoking hot, and so he still does check out her ass as she stalks away.


	2. Unbelievable

**Title: **Unbelievable  
**Author:** Clara Fox  
**Summary: **Veronica is a businesslike person, has plenty of experience compartmentalizing, so it only takes her one deep breath to clear away the heady rush that comes of letting her brain spend time between his legs. **  
Setting:** Expansion of the second main Veronica/Weevil scene in 2x19, "Nevermind the Buttocks," from Veronica's perspective.  
**Rating: **M, for suggestiveness.  
**Disclaimer: **The italicized dialogue is transcribed from the episode, and as such belongs to Rob Thomas and the writers. The rest is my best wishful thinking.

* * *

That Veronica Mars is angry isn't the problem. She knows that she should be mad – Weevil almost definitely killed Thumper, and she has no reason to believe he's stopped lying to her about other things he might have done. It's not that she isn't angry, it's that she can't keep herself angry at him. 

Veronica is angry that she couldn't get enough hard evidence against Thumper in the time she promised Weevil she would, and angry that she didn't think to find the real witness months ago. She can't suppress the guilt she feels for allowing her dreams to convince her that Weevil might have crashed the bus, and she doesn't know why she seems incapable of holding back the sniping remarks she's been spitting at him all day.

But most of all, Veronica is angry that she let her guard down enough to fall for Weevil. He is everything that she doesn't want in a man, yet she wants everything about him.

And so when he knocks at the office door, all she can think to say is something snarky. Clearly, Veronica Mars is an expert at reaction formation.

_You here to confess? Is that your tail I see between your legs?_

Great, Veronica: nag him yet again, then immediately admit you were staring at his crotch. Perhaps you could have said it loud enough for your dad to hear – see if that could have possibly made the situation any worse.

_No, but I can see how you might get confused. I need you to get me into Clemmons' office._

Veronica is a businesslike person, has plenty of experience compartmentalizing, so it only takes her one deep breath to clear away the heady rush that comes of letting her brain spend time between his legs. Okay, two breaths. Also, the abruptness of his request helps a lot in restoring her sense of sarcasm. Oooookay, Weevil. You're going to have to put a little more effort than that into your flirting in order to convince Veronica to break and enter twice in two days.

_Look, I know you got a key. You spend as much time in there as he does._

While it's comforting to know that in this particular case Weevil is wrong, if only on a technicality, Veronica does wonder whether he's bluffing, or if her access to the master keys is now common knowledge. Which would explain Clemmons' well-founded paranoia. All right, Weevil. Quid pro quo. Veronica doesn't phrase it like that though, because, seriously, who does Hannibal impressions anymore?

_You want my help? You're going to have to answer a few questions from me. First, what do you need out of Clemmons' office?_

Veronica is initially proud that she has produced a sentence that is neither overly bitchy nor suggestive, but realizes almost immediately how deeply pathetic it is that Weevil has forced her to lower the bar this far. She is Veronica Mars, and Veronica Mars does not flail around trying to return serves. She will regroup now.

_A paddle. It belonged to Thumper. Clemmons confiscated it._

Way to lob a nice easy one there, Weevil. She can feel the control of the conversation sweeping back to her, and now that Weevil is sitting down, there's no longer a whole swath of dangerous and distracting territory right at eye level.

Belonged?_ Interesting use of the past tense. What's so special about this paddle?_

Veronica has two type of comfort zones in conversation, and they both involve her having information the other person doesn't know she's aware of. Her favorite situation is revealing a plan, in detail, to its planner, and watching the fear grow as she nails every little point. Only slightly less awesome is allowing someone to tell her something she already knows. It's often interesting to see what gets left out of the story.

_I saw it when I dumped the carnival cash in Thumper's shop locker. It had license plates engraved on it. I'm guessing that those plates belong to the people he was delivering product to for the Fitzpatricks. Probably made it as some kind of insurance policy._

Weevil doesn't seem to be keeping anything back, though, and Veronica can't help but be kind of impressed that he got a little farther than she was able to with the same information – she had always known they were license plates, but had gotten too distracted by the muggings and Logan's case and her bus-crash dreams to take it another step. Now she's wondering why she didn't try to run the plates earlier, and mad at Weevil for upturning the conversation on her again.

_How's that working out for him?_

Seriously, Veronica. It's not like Thumper got his name for his adorable resemblance to a rabbit. He was a murderer and a drug dealer, and while she was mad at Weevil for taking the law into his own hands, it was more because of the risk that it placed him in than because she thought Thumper didn't deserve to die. But it's too late to take it back; Weevil's already getting heated.

_Look. The Fitzpatricks have turned the PCHers into slave labor. There's nothing those guys won't do to ensure timely payment. Threats, beatings, torture. That paddle, if it is what I think it is, it's serious leverage._

He's right, the Fitzpatricks are horrible, and she saw enough of the PCHers in Weevil's day to believe that, despite their love of mayhem and violence and underage drinking, they really wouldn't have gotten into drugs without some sort of outside influence. He's right, and what's more, he's kind of noble, if she's right in thinking that he wants to rescue the boys who turned on him. Contrition looks really attractive on Weevil. If his aim was to soften her up, he has succeeded.

_Fair enough… second question: why were you following the school bus the day of the crash?_

Veronica doubts that Weevil will realize that this is her version of an apology for accusing him of orchestrating the crash. She asks because she needs to know, not because she still has any doubt – the hurt in his eyes yesterday had removed any feeble suspicions she had – and because a part of her wants him to look at her and say: I was following you, Veronica. I woke up terrified that something would happen to you that day, and I followed you to protect you the way I knew your rich white boy couldn't.

_Cervando. I love the guy, but he was book smart, street dumb. He was telling anybody who listened how he hustled Liam Fitzpatrick, and word was out that Liam was looking for him. I had his back, just in case. Believe me?_

Of course she believed him. The sadness, the softness in his voice, though he's talking about one of his boys, confirming that it was really nothing to do with Veronica, the softness still hits her harder than any of his dirty winks ever did. She thinks she might cry, knows she absolutely can't. As she has done in so many other conversations with Weevil, Veronica regroups.

_How can I not when you're batting those Maybelline lashes at me?_

She haa enough time to anticipate a moment of understanding between them – maybe he realizes she's sorry for the things she said yesterday, maybe it's the Mabelline joke, because he can't not realize how gorgeous his eyelashes are – before what she sees in her peripheral vision lets the bottom fall out of the moment.

_Hey…Dad._

Hey, Dad! You remember Weevil, the kid who at one time was the toughest part of your job as sherrif? The guy you've warned me to stay away from, on numerous occasions, back at a time when your biggest concern was that he actually had committed whatever crime it was, and so it was pointless to try to get him off? Can you tell that now I think I might want to get him off in an entirely different context? You probably can, because you somehow can always tell these things. Please say something, now.

_I'm heading out, honey. See you at home soon?_

Something normal, good. Veronica can give a normal response to that. And, thank god, it's a response that won't involve her promising to be present at what could only be a very uncomfortable dinner.

_I have a shift at the Hut._

Veronica has never been so glad for the opportunity to re-make not-foamy-enough lattes for customers with maddeningly affected ways of pronouncing their drink orders.

_Lock up, would you? … Eli._

Veronica only cringes inside her head, but she suspects that her dad still knows she's doing it.

_Sherrif. _

You didn't honestly think he would magically start liking you, she doesn't say to Weevil. But with the amount of subtext flying around the room right now, she can only assume that her defeated smile has communicated that clearly enough.

… _key, please?_

That was what he came here for. Veronica knows there's not much chance of Weevil sticking around to banter now that they both are sure her dad is waiting outside to watch him leave, but she has one more point to score before he goes.

_Keep it._

Weevil's innocent surprise almost makes Veronica feel bad for what she's about to do. But it's a small price to pay for the win in this particular conversation derby.

_Seriously?_

She keeps her eyes mostly downcast, to keep from laughing too soon.

_Yeah, Clemmons changed his locks. It's worthless._

Veronica really wishes she could dare to look up at his face right now, but in addition to the risk of breaking out in laughter, she has a drawer to rifle through.

_What? You make me jump through all your hoops just so – _

Another thing Veronica is the best at? Timing.

_Lucky I have a copy of this, huh?_

Now she does look at him, because it is this look that she most wants to see. His mouth half-open and eyes deliberately closed in part-expectant surprise, the defeated smile and an exhale of breath that she can almost pretend to feel on her lips. She wants to believe that the smile is also one of pride, of him secretly loving to be bested by the tiny blond girl whose ass he checks out when he thinks she can't see his reflection in a bus window.

_You're unbelievable._

Yeah, she is pretty unbelievable, and he only knows the half of it. Veronica would like to ask, What do you say we figure out some of the other ways in which I am unbelievable, huh, Weevil? But Veronica Mars is a little bit afraid that Weevil will say yes, and she's still not sure that that is as good an idea as it sounds. And also there's the fact that her dad may very well have some sort of camera in the office; actually, she would bet her life on the presence of a bug of some kind of another. Perhaps a different sort of group project would be a bit safer, in this case.

_What do you say we figure out who some of those fine folks are?_

And please keep showing me your good side, Weevil. Veronica is looking forward to the prospect of working with him instead of against him, because although it's surprisingly fun to thwart him, Veronica thinks she might also like making him happy, and Weevil is never hotter than when he's happy.


End file.
